Screen vs Screen: Catch-22

It probably would have been better if I'd done this before Memorial Day, but oh well.

Anyway, this week I watched Hulu's Catch-22 series.  Or since it's only 6 episodes maybe miniseries would be a better description.  I thought it was really good but then since I hadn't read the book in about 12 years I wasn't sitting around saying, "That wasn't how they did it in the book!  That's not what happened in the book!  That's not how he looked in the book!"  You know, as can happen if you're really familiar with a book when you watch a TV/movie adaptation.

The gist of the story is the same:  in 1944 there's a bombardier named John Yossarian who is deathly afraid of death.  He does just about anything to keep himself from going on bombing missions from making a liver ailment to poisoning his own squadron with soap flakes.  And yet his commanding officer, Colonel Cathcart, continues raising the number of missions before someone can be rotated back home.

A recurring theme in the Hulu version is that while he's trying so hard to escape death, Yossarian inadvertently causes many of those in his unit to die.  Early on a new guy named Mudd shows up and asks where the admin tent is; Yossarian tells him it's the 2nd tent on the right but too late realizes it's the 3rd tent on the right.  Mudd goes into the 2nd tent and gets pressed into a bombing mission in which he's killed.

Later Yossarian is on a mission but he and the navigator can't agree whether the bridge is the right bridge so he doesn't drop the bombs.  He has them go in for a second pass, during which they destroy the bridge but the plane is shot down and one of his friends is killed.

When Cathcart is determined to send the unit on a dangerous bombing run of the city of Bologna, Yossarian sneaks into the briefing room and out of spite moves the "bombing line" north of the city on the map.  To his surprise, Cathcart and the rest of the command staff wake up thinking the city was captured.  Instead of radioing headquarters to check this, Major de Coverley heads to the city to start obtaining quarters for the American soldiers only to find Nazis still occupying it.  He's never seen again.

Another time Yossarian sabotages the intercom on his plane and convinces the pilot, McWatt, to turn back.  That night Cathcart singles their crew out for punishment by not letting them have baked Alaska like the rest of the unit.  He dresses McWatt down in front of everyone, which prompts McWatt to steal a fighter the next day and do a little stunt flying.  But he flies too low and kills a guy named Kid Sampson.  Out of guilt, McWatt crashes the fighter into a mountain.

But what breaks Yossarian is the inadvertent death of a Private Snowden.  Since his friend Nately died in the rear gun turret, Yossarian tells Snowden to just sit to the side since there aren't any German fighters at this point anyway.  But the plane is hit and Snowden dies; had he been in the back turret he'd have been fine.  The terrible part is at first Yossarian thinks Snowden's only been hit in the leg.  He assures the young private it'll be fine after he puts a tourniquet on it.  Snowden keeps complaining he's cold--and then Yossarian realizes Snowden has been hit in the abdomen and there's nothing he can do to save the boy.

When the plane lands, Yossarian strips off his bloody clothes and refuses to put clothes on again, even to a medal ceremony with an important general, who just shrugs and pins the medal to Yossarian's hat.

Looking over the SparkNotes for the book, I saw that the miniseries actually rearranges some events.  Snowden's death was chronologically near the beginning, not the end in the book.  It's the event that gives Yossarian his fear of flying.  Whereas in the Hulu series it's used as the breaking point for Yossarian, when he no longer has the will to try to fight his fate.

Besides the Hulu series I also watched the 1970 movie on Amazon Prime.  The movie kept more closely to the order of events in the book.  Really between the movie and miniseries you get most everything that happens in the novel as the movie cuts out some things like Yossarian's training in America with Lieutenant Scheisskopf (German for "shithead") and sleeping with Scheisskopf's wife.  Major de Coverley is cut out entirely.  But the Hulu series cuts other things like Yossarian being stabbed by an Italian whore.

The movie has a far more hopeful ending than the Hulu series.  In the movie Yossarian hears his friend Orr, who crashed in the ocean and was presumed dead, has washed up in Sweden.  Yossarian sees a way to break the cycle by following Orr's example and running away to Sweden.  This is also the end in the book.  Whereas the Hulu series ends with Yossarian broken and naked in the nose of a bomber on yet another mission.  Neither ending is "happy" but obviously the movie/book ending is happier than the Hulu one.

Both the movie and miniseries are good in a way.  The movie is obviously shorter at 2 hours while the miniseries is about 4 1/2 hours altogether.  But I think the miniseries has a more easy to understand narrative as the movie's narrative, like the book, frequently uses flashbacks, especially to the death of Snowden.  Since the movie was made in 1970, the production values of the Hulu miniseries are a lot better.  And while Alan Arkin is a great, respected actor, I think Christopher Abbott's performance as Yossarian was better.  A little more subtle and realistic, I'd say.

No matter which you watch, there's still a lot left out from the book.   You should probably read that for the full experience.